Police chief owns a house on Benefits Street - but her tenants WON'T be featuring in Channel 4's parade of scroungers and shoplifters

• Yvonne Mosquito, 49, bought a property on James Turner Street in 2002
• The road features in controversial Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street
  
• She is deputy police and crime commissioner for West Midlands Police
• Her own force is investigating after residents boasted about criminality
  

By ANDY DOLAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Published: 09:28 EST, 17 January 2014 | Updated: 10:14 EST, 18 January 2014

Landlady: Yvonne Mosquito owns a house on Benefits Street, it has emerged

After Channel 4 lifted the lid on the crime and grime of Benefits Street,  it might not come as a shock to hear that the area is of quite some interest to the police.

But surprisingly, one high-ranking member of the force is not there to deal out justice – instead she saw the road as the perfect place to expand her property portfolio.

Yvonne Mosquito, Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands, snapped up number 95 James Turner Street in Birmingham back in 2002, it emerged yesterday.

Mrs Mosquito, 49, and her 57-year-old husband Winston paid £30,000 for the property, which neighbours claim is now empty.

The two-bedroom terraced house, which has increased in value to around £88,000, sits just yards away from the petty criminals and recovering drug addicts who live in the crime-ridden area.

It is located in the middle of the city’s deprived Winson Green suburb, and the street is currently the subject of a controversial five-part observational documentary which set out to examine the everyday lives of its inhabitants.

Living only a few doors away are some of the ‘stars’ of the series – which has shown residents being threatened with eviction, drinking strong lager in the street  and discussing breaking into a delivery driver’s van in order to steal his sat nav.

The property is close to the ramshackle address of self-confessed alcoholic and recovering drug addict James Clarke, 44, who is referred to by his nickname, Fungi, on the programme.

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Investigated: Mark Thomas, who admitted fiddling his benefits on the show, is led from his house on James Turner Street by police

Mess: A resident shown by a pile of rubbish left on the street, but Dee maintains it is a 'clean street'

During the first episode of Benefits Street he was filmed as he swindled well-meaning shoppers out of small change by selling them fake copies of the Big Issue in Birmingham city centre.

Some of the other neighbours living close by include Mark Thomas and Becky Howe, both 23, who openly joked about fiddling their benefits claims in the first episode of the show.

All the more surprising then that Mrs Mosquito, who earns £65,000 a year and is currently enjoying a holiday cruise in the Caribbean, would want to put down roots in such an insalubrious part of town.

The house is by no means the only piece of the police chief’s property empire. According to her register of interests she also owns land in Winson Green, another plot of land in the city’s Highgate area – and has bought a £450,000, six-bedroom house on the outskirts of upmarket Sutton Coldfield.

Mrs Mosquito, whose second role as the Labour councillor representing Bimingham’s Nechells ward comes with an annual salary of £16,267, has also seen two of her children get on the property ladder at the tender age of just 19 and 22.

Last year they inherited a five-bedroom property in Jamaica where Mrs Mosquito’s parents were born.

Child 'bride': A 20-year-old Romanian, right, boasted to cameras that his 15-year-old 'wife', left, was 'no problem'

Unsightly: The programme shows that there are often large amounts of rubbish heaped up on the street

It is unclear whether the James Turner Street property was inhabited when Benefits Street was being filmed between October 2012 and October last year.

However records show that Simeon Mosquito, 31, thought to be Mr Mosquito’s son from an earlier relationship, was formerly registered as living at the house – and the property has since been let out to other tenants.

Last night a woman who answered the door at her detached house in sought-after Streetly in Sutton Coldfield said only: ‘Yvonne isn’t here.

‘She’s on holiday in the Caribbean on a cruise.’

The programme has attracted its fair share of controversy, with some of the people filmed for the show claiming they were ‘duped’ into taking part in what they were told would be about the street’s ‘close-knit community’.

Channel 4 has strongly denied any suggestion of wrongdoing.